Duende

Blind Artist Vision: blog by Stella De Genova

Duende is thought to be a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity, often connected with flamenco.  But artists of all walks think about it, including visual art and writing.  My brother, Al DeGenova, who is a poet and wrote a poem about duende, She Paints, first introduced me to this term.  Now, for the month of February, the LaGrange Art League, where I exhibit artwork, has given us this concept to think about as a prompt for what we are exhibiting next month.

Meanwhile, my pastel painting instructor has asked us to try our hand at the abstract.  We still think about color theory and line but give ourselves the unstructured freedom to do what we want on the paper.  This all seems a little karmic to me and also a little uncomfortable because I’ve always been an artist who tries to capture reality.  Now I have to find creativity from within rather than from what surrounds me.  I have to search for my duende.

At first, I considered not even trying to do the exercise and then I thought, what could it hurt?  I will say that my first attempt was pretty bad by most standards, including my own!  I won’t be sharing that picture. But as they say, “If at first you don’t succeed…” and so I gave it another try.

I searched deep inside and recalled an exercise I did often as a kid.  I would make a continuous line (sort of a scribble) on a paper to create a design and color it.  I thought I’d give this a try with my pastels instead of the crayons I used so long ago.

I don’t know if there is any artistic or abstract merit to this but I found it interesting and my instructor thought it turned out well enough.  I was on a roll and I realized I could get something on paper much quicker than a realistic drawing and painting so I decided to try another.

I am a pretty structured person so I don’t think I’ll be turning into a abstract artist any time soon but I found this exercise to be freeing.  I like pushing my art to stand up to the quality of sighted artists but this is a great way to have some fun and keep painting even when I don’t have a specific piece to work on.

As for thinking about duende, it’s good to discover on these cold winter days that there is more artistic self-expression and interpretation for me to investigate, and more importantly, to have fun with.

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